Wines without SULFITES

[Thomas]

I looked it up, Jackie. Some of the information about sulfites is not exactly right. For instance, the Web site claims that sulfites cause headaches, but that remains an anecdotal claim, not a scientific one, unless these guys have further information. Also, they claim the FDA regulates sulfite use in wine--as far as I know, the FDA is not invovled with wine regulating. And too, they claim the levels of sulfite allowed in wine are upwards of 300 ppm. This is true, but with sulfites there are two ways to read it: bound sulfur dioxide and free sulfur dioxide. The free is the stuff that asthmatics react to, the bound is the one that seems to cause the anecdotal headaches. The free usually rests near 20 ppm (goes above that at times of course). The free is the one that protects best against oxidation.

SO2 gets bound by additions over the course of winemaking. It's technical, but suffice to say if you add some after fermentation, by the first racking the free will have subsided and the bound will start building; add more, the free increases (over time, some of the free becomes bound, and so on). That is how the bound reaches higher concentrations than the free.

[This message has been edited by foodie (edited 11-03-2002).]